She added that the house occupied by Denise, her mother and four other siblings also served as a shop.

Denise, a grade 10 student at the Jose Marti High School in Spanish Town, St Catherine, would've celebrated her 16th birthday next Wednesday. She was described by residents as well-mannered and promising.

“A one nice little girl, enuh; she do everything weh her mother tell her fi do. All that line a clothes you see a she wash the whole a dem before she go beach yesterday,” Denise's elderly neighbour Nestlyn Redguarde said, while pointing at a clothes line by the child's home.

“She was a nice girl and a this reach Denise... Dem supposed to know is who because is in the house it happen,” the neighbour said.

“She nuh give no trouble at all, a the best pikney Debbie have down there,” cried one resident, who gave her name only as Karen, adding that she is a friend of the child's mother.

“If Denise pass 100 times she tell you good evening, sometime me have to tell her nuh tell me no more evening,” Karen said.

The 15-year-old's neighbour, who goes by the alias “Shorty”, was in shock yesterday.

“She just call me like five minutes before me hear say she dead. She tell me she want me do her hair and she ask me what kind of hair to buy and I told her buy a curly hair. Mi can't believe this,” she said.

Residents say they are calling on the police to quickly bring the teenager's killer to justice.

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